


Unpredictable

by ProfessorPNut



Category: Banjo-Kazooie Series, Undertale (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:46:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26488888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorPNut/pseuds/ProfessorPNut
Summary: An all-powerful creator gives a few seconds of thought to some indie game from five years ago.
Kudos: 5





	Unpredictable

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for the anniversary. May or may not be a preface to something in the future.

It was five minutes to 7 on the fifteenth of September, and the Lord of Games was busy.

The morning was, as always, full of tasks of the highest priority. The much-awaited technopunk game required refurbishment, delayed yet again due to real-world issues. The next-generation console launches required launch titles that were both functional yet made use of the new technology. The new game for that platforming marsupial was nearing launch, and would hopefully surpass expectations. Patch updates. Cosmetic additions. Bugs reports that never ceased to end.

The Lord of Games could handle all of this without issue, and in fact had been enjoying the possibilities afforded by the coming generation of technology. What he had _not_ been enjoying was the sudden rise of a certain well-known indie game on his priority list, an issue that he was currently making apparent to the game’s owners via digital communication.

“…- I don’t know how many times I must repeat myself. If you’re going to insist on legalizing sudden velocity increases within the game’s parameters, then the automated anti-cheat mechanisms required become _far_ more difficult to calibrate. Yes, I understand _very_ well how many players the game has. Yes, the island servers were merely a stop-gap. No, I cannot explain _why_ so many players are determined to cheat in this game.”

The Lord of Games received an internal reminder that it was one minute to 7. He sighed.“…regrettably, that is all the time I can afford for nowRest assured that the mid-season update shall be delivered later as scheduled. Signing off.”

With that, the Lord of Games shut off not only his feed, but the innumerable other processes that were operating by his will. Undeveloped worlds within the game domes paused in whatever they were rendering. Conveyer belts working on endless required models slowed to a rest. The infinite playtesting monkeys in the lower levels collectively yawned. drowsing onto their designated pillows. The clock struck 7, and the video game factory was set to sleep.

The Lord of Games sighed again, giving silent praise to Creation for mandatory break periods. In his countless and unknowable circuitry, he gave a considerable number of nanoseconds towards stewing over the sudden urgent requirements of the past week.

That game, he thought to himself, wasn’t even expected to breach a hundred thousand players in its peak. He had, of course, given it all the attention that he could afford when it was in development, and had even enjoyed refining the bumbling animations of the player-avatars. But he never expected “pastel-balloon-aesthetic battle royale obstacle course” to hit it as big as it did - and now it had a cheating issue that rivaled even the most competitive of his decade-old shooters. To think he’d have to allocate so much attention to this game, out of all the ones that ever existed!

Players, he thought not for the first time, are simply too unpredictable in what they like.

Before he could get another moment’s rest, an annoying bark sounded out from his internal calendar. He gave a passing look at the message that popped up, seeing a given date with a reminder beneath it.

Within moments, he opened a holographic screenand penned a letter, sending it off to the appropriate recipient as soon as he’d finished it. It read as thus:

_It is with earnest recognition that I commemorate the fifth anniversary of the game Undertale. Few games remain so celebrated after half a decade of existence, and truly, few might ever shall. Congratulations on this achievement._

_As always, the development of the second game continues at an acceptable pace, and I anticipate the day that we may both see its completion._

_With Regards,_

_L. O. G._

The Lord of Games was satisfied with the speed that he had written this. Alone and with time to rest, he turned his great attention towards this game whose anniversary he had just recognized.

Once, it was but one of many crowdfunded projects that had made it to his doorstep. The premise was simple enough to work with - bullet-hell mechanics layered on top of a role-playing game system, and the ability to complete the game regardless of one’s level. True, he had thought the supplied lore was odd even then, and the bosses had some fairly clever gimmicks within the combat mechanics. But ultimately, it was a 4-5 hour single-player story of little replay value. He did not give it a second thought even as he finished it, sending it off to be distributed by its canine benefactor.

Yet as always, players were utterly unpredictable in what they liked.

The success had caught everyone off-guard. Suddenly, the entire industry seemed to know about every major character and significant plot point in it. Bootleg attempts to replicate it began to sprout up, from both the fringes of creation and the requests that came into his mail departments. Any game with the capacity to display art was flooded with hearts, flowers, and skeleton heads.

The Lord of Games had spent decades performing his craft. He knew much about what made a game great, putting as much as he could afford into each of his creations. But he could not say, even now, how _Undertale_ had gotten the success that it did.

He decided that it _had_ been a while since he’d visited that particular world.

* * *

Between the game worlds, the Lord of Games moved. Around him were worlds of incredible and massive scale, with swarms of far smaller worlds in between them. Worlds of twisted shapes, moulded by all the possible outcomes coded into them. Worlds beyond counting, and impossible to navigate if one didn’t know where one was going.

The Lord of Games had no need for proper descriptors of what a game world looked like from the outside. The issue was irrelevant to majority of video game characters, who could only exist within them. A young woman he once knew (whose access to the spaces between was a consequence of her fate, for a while) described them as similar to ovoid dust nebulas, held up by unfathomably-large metal frames. He supposed that it was a crude yet adequate descriptor for anyone who couldn’t see the coding that held them all together.

Before anyone could recognize that he was there, the Lord of Games hovered over the tiny world of _Undertale_.

There were two factors that made this small world’s outside appearance unique. One was that one end of the world was split into three ends - two narrow yet bright ends that pointed away from each other, and a large yet faded rounded end between them. Aside from that, it would have been difficult to differentiate the world from others of its structure.

Well, discounting the second factor, which was the voluminous and endless trail of fan-created worlds that followed beneath it. If worlds were like ships, then these trails were like forests of seaweed, clinging like barnacles to their undersides.

The Lord of Games looked down on the trail, surprised that it had grown even longer than when he had last seen it. None of them were made by him, of course - majority of them weren’t even game worlds, built of far simpler constructions like ink and letters. But such creations cling to the worlds that inspired them into being, dependant on their sources for context. Some of the ones here even sprouted from _other_ fan creations, as dependant on pre-existing twists on a formula as a purple plumber.

The phenomenon was not new. The Lord of Games had seen such trails of fan-created worlds beneath the most successful and popular of game worlds, far greater in scope, reach, and ambition. But _Undertale_ , despite the immeasurable lengths of fan creation that trailed beneath it, was still a tiny world amongst a universe of giants, and yet had a following that rivaled even the greatest of them.

The Lord of Games recognized how strange it was that he had come here at all. He rarely ever recognized a game’s _second_ anniversary.

“What is it about you, oh little game, that inspires so many to follow you?” he said in that empty space. “How is it that hundreds of people still play you, even to this day? It cannot be the mechanics, for you were not made with replayability. Am I truly to believe that it is your world, and the characters in it, that people never tire of revisiting?”

[You appear troubled by the fact,] asked a voice, spoken in the language of hands. The Lord of Games turned his attention towards the source, only mildly surprised by its presence.

As far as he was concerned, the mystery man had no name, and little influence on the events of the world he was moored to. He had been lumped with the rest of the leftover development files that every game hid out of sight, relatively inaccessible and thus hardly cause for concern at the time. Thus, the Lord of Games was surprised when he first met this character long ago, having no recollection of creating him, but their past conversations had been entertaining enough that he had decided to leave him be.

[Do you take umbrage that this world remains so recognized?] continued the mystery man.

“I have no _umbrage_ with this world,” the Lord of Games answered. “I have hand in its creation, and share in its success. I even commemorated its fifth year of existence, in case you lack a calendar in this void. Do you require one, perhaps?”

The mystery man shook his head, smiling. The Lord of Games wondered, not for the first time, if he could do anything _except_ smile. [But you do not see it as one of your own. In the past, you called yourself creator of these worlds around us, and that my world is one of your creations. Why do you not see it as such?]

The Lord of Games, he of immeasurable power and few equals, turned his face away with a groan. There was a simple answer, of course, but he knew he oughtn’t share such truths about the creation of games. No, there was workaround for even a question like this. “There are…things that I continue to learn about the creation of games. Even up to the present. Unexpected developments always seem to lead to success, and I quite prefer expected ones.”

He looked back down on the small and unassuming world of _Undertale_. “And yet, success remains an unpredictable thing. I can observe a thousand similar triumphs and mimic them all in my next creation, only to watch it wither from lack of interaction within a few mere months. No, the greatest successes are most often born from accident and devotion, and neither can be artificially simulated. None can predict where the next great game shall come from. And so I continue to create, worlds born in the multitudes, until another great one can be recognized.”

The Lord of Games began to ruminate. “For example, I once jump-started a whole genre through a movie tie-in game-“ he said aloud, before realizing that the mystery man had disappeared. He turned to scan the world’s surface, but could not find any notable trace of his guest.

Truthfully, it somewhat bothered the unomniscient Lord of Games that he didn’t know the story behind this mystery man. But he supposed it was yet another unknowable quirk of _Undertale_ , one of many that existed beneath its surface.

In the space between worlds, the Lord of Games beheld the tiny world before him. He saw its inhabitants and their potential fates, endings both cruel and kind. He saw the moral routes that could be walked along the traversable hallways of the world, twisting and crossing through each other. He saw the story in its entirety, potentially-redundant start to branching ends, all roads both true and false at once. He even saw where the beginning of a new world connected to the old one, through connections that no one but its benefactor could trace.

The Lord of Games wondered if he would return in another five years time, or if some new creation inspired by this one might take its place. Most of all, he wondered just what surprises this little world might have left in it.


End file.
